From: nuny@bid.nes   
      
   On Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7:18:22 PM UTC-8, 0something0 wrote:   
   > Obviously true, but how large of a population could the colonies achieve   
   > given the time-frame and the events I mentioned earlier?   
      
     In forty years? Billions, if automation is sufficiently massive. Lots and   
   lots of ships carrying colonists, free parcels of Mars given out,   
   city-building machines along the lines suggested in my other post, automated   
   comet capture-deorbiting robots to    
   acquire enough water for them all...   
      
     Sustaining that population is simply not going to work unless Mars has been   
   significantly terraformed in that forty years though, or unless Mars refuses   
   to de-automate, maybe automating some nice weapons factories immediately after   
   the order goes out    
   from Earth to support them declaring independence.   
      
     I can't see cottage industries supplying air and water from rocks for a   
   village, much less the other necessities of life.   
      
      
     Mark L. Fergerson   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)